Sunday, May 20, 2012

Four men and a woman of courage.. their mission: to combat violent crime!

Quick Blast Review:

When recluse, action junkie ex-army Captain Blair Morgan (Stephen Parr) is ready to throw in the towel, he is persuaded to create a civilian task force to clean up violent crime. He agrees if only he can choose his team; a by-his-own-rules cop and demolition derby car driver, J. D. Smith (William Russ); female police psychologist and machine gun expert, Chris Winslow (Sonja Smits); alcoholic cop with a short fuse Jack Coburn (Wings Hauser) and demolition expert and general nutter, Nick Kowalski (John Matuszak). Together they are COMMAND 5! And as Command 5 under Captain Morgan's command, they get an awesome bullet-proof truck that make the Star Trek door sound when it opens its hatch, and an arsenal of the latest weapons (and motorbikes in the back of the truck) to wreck havoc with.

After a relentless training montage, the team are called in for the first assignment - a group called The Brotherhood, let by Hawk (William Forsythe), have taken the Governer's daughter hostage and hold an entire town to ransom. They demand that their people be released from prison or the bodies will start piling up. Who else can save the day but COMMAND 5 - they have badges on their jackets and their own jumbo jet, too!

This is top shelf entertainment right here, folks! I had a whale of a time with this obvious A-Team clone. Everyone gives it their all to blow up as much stuff as possible. John Matuszak's Kowalski is the highlight for me, being the massive fan of One Man Force that I am. Kowalski grins insanely while playing classical music as background to his planned detonations, or just screaming at and pushing down walls instead of climbing over them. His best moment would be carving a statue of The Thinker out of explosive clay and blowing up a bridge with it, haha! J. D. Smith's constant "like my daddy always said" lines get a bit tiresome, but it's never tiresome seeing Chris Winslow with an automatic weapon in her hands!

Wiliam Forsythe is a baddy in everything he plays, and there is a reason for that - he does it so well! He's pretty slimy as Hawk and you just love to hate him. Stephen Parr's Morgan is a quality leader, showing restraint and good leadership skills, managing to group this band of misfits together without the colossal force of Wings and Matuszak causing the whole thing to explode. Wings is his usual great self, and his schtick of drinking scotch with milk is pretty amusing. He has a temper on him and is the cause of both bar fights in the film. That's right we get bar fights (one with hookers and a pimp!); we also get motorbike chases and countless rounds of ammunition used to blow up large set pieces.

Being a TV movie that is almost viewable by younger folk - I'd let a 12 year old watch this, for sure - only two guys are killed during the film, and there is no blood splatter. But a HELL of a lot of cars and buildings are decimated! That's more fun anyway, right? BOOM!

The Final Fifteen:

Just how you think it goes! Hawk won't release the hostages, the Governor won't release the prisoners, so how do we resolve this situation? Send in Command 5! The team go covertly in with the attitude of "secure the hostages first, nail the punks second!". Explosions abound as Command 5 battle their way through Hawk's brigade of scum and rescue the hostages, with Kowalski throwing guys out of windows and Coburn throwing grenades at everything else. After a quick bike chase to catch Hawk, the film ends in the TV-cheeseball kind of way that even gets a "Merry Christmas" thrown in for good measure.

Sourced From:

Japanese VHS I picked up from eBay. It was made for TV so 4:3 is the correct ratio to watch this in. Distributed by CIC worldwide from what I can see.

Trailer:

Not a trailer, but it may as well be - the opening credits sequence that I recorded from my own tape. Sensational!